


Fourth of July

by f0rt1ss1m0



Series: Sing for Her [3]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Amedot Bomb, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Illegal Use of Fireworks, Kissing, Light Angst, Making Out, Making Up, Post-breakup, what a nice set of tags so far
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 16:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7395040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f0rt1ss1m0/pseuds/f0rt1ss1m0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean any of it/I just got too lonely, lonely, whoa/In between being young and being right/You were my Versailles at night"</p><p>-</p><p>Written for Amedotbomb Prompt 1: Fireworks</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fourth of July

**Author's Note:**

> \- Fourth of July — Fall Out Boy -

Even when she had her headphones on, Peridot could hear everything from her office. That wasn't always a bad thing and it certainly wasn't now, but it had still been a point of complaint to the resident repairwoman who didn't want to do anything. "If you want your soundproofing so bad, go buy the stuff yourself," Jasper had grumbled. “What’s your deal today?”

She _had_ no “deal” today. Peridot had only inquired politely _seven times._ Certainly she wasn't about to go out and purchase supplies from any earth merchant; she would have to stack them on the ridiculous riding tractor that inched along at embarrassingly slow speeds and did not feel like rewiring the machine to increase range of acceleration. Jasper only needed to carry the supplies, she reasoned. Jasper could carry anything.

Now, she wondered if she should have been more persistent in her last attempted request. Something outside the barn was making a very, _very_ annoying noise; a small automobile by the sounds of it. Vaguely familiar but coming awfully close. Ah yes, the vehicle purchased for Steven's age-dependent ritual of the "Sweet Sixteen" — perhaps he had finally stopped crashing into trees and come to visit her! Already pleased, she paused her anime, whipped off her headphones, and took to the ladder, careful not to slip on any of the appearance modifiers that Lapis Lazuli had taken to so carelessly leaving in her space.

There was the blue gem at the side of her orange archenemy, who lay unconscious and vulnerable on the double mattresses as she did almost always nowadays. Lazuli held one of Peridot’s green markers and seemed to be looking down at Jasper’s face in satisfaction.

“Whatever you’re doing, Lazuli, you better not blame it on me,” said Peridot, stepping over a puddle of chips and acidic green goo. Ugh, Chrysoprase really needed to clean up after herself. “On a lighter note, Steven’s here!”

“That’s not Steven,” replied Lazuli, and bent over to make another mark on Jasper’s face. “Steven doesn’t do donuts on the front lawn.”

Oh. Yes. Perhaps if Lazuli had said that sooner, before Peridot had exerted the physical toil of racing to the front door and seeing this spectacle for herself, then it would have served useful. But she hadn’t, and Peridot was now faced with the realization for herself. It was Steven’s dark red car, but not his driving.

“Amethyst,” Peridot murmured to herself a second before the driver pulled to a stop and smirked out the open window.

“In the flesh, homegirls,” the purple gem gave an informal salute. Her eyes flicked down to Peridot for just a second before pulling away, her face inscrutable beyond the casual grin. “Too quiet out here. Where’s the squad?”

“The rubies are at a game,” Peridot replied stiffly. It should have been obvious, anyway; the Beach City Rubies were already legendary and had games every night. “Chrysoprase is stars know where. Jasper’s asleep.”

Amethyst blew a raspberry. “Again. Whatever, they’re all lame. Are…uh…you and Lazuli up for some shenanigans?”

“Not tonight,” called Lazuli. “According to Garnet I’m going to spend the night running from a marker-covered Jasper.”

“And yet you continue drawing on her,” put in Peridot dryly.

Lazuli had moved on to one of Jasper’s biceps and was writing something that looked vaguely like _My name is Jasper and I suck, blaaaargh._ “Such is fate.”

Amethyst gave a short laugh and Peridot rolled her eyes. Whatever. Even after nearly three Earth years, Peridot still could not understand Lazuli, and had begun losing hope that she ever would. She turned awkwardly back to Amethyst, stunning as ever, with her luscious pale hair tied by a bandanna and what seemed to be smoky eyeshadow around her vision spheres.

“So,” Peridot coughed, “guess it’s you and me.”

It was no use pretending that she had another social life. Amethyst knew her better.

“Guess it is,” the little quartz replied with a shrug, “hop in — ” and it was settled. Peridot climbed up into the passenger seat and they took off.

The sun had begun to set against the horizon, painting the world in those beautiful oranges and pinks, but Amethyst drove away from the sunset and away from Beach City, too fast even for farm roads — but that was just Amethyst for you. All of the windows were open, letting the warm summer wind rush against Peridot’s face, and the radio blared something from a singer whose voice soared. There was campfire smoke on the wind.

Through the rearview mirror, Peridot noticed a strange assortment of boxes in the backseat and trunk that hadn’t been there the last time she rode in this car. “Ah…Amethyst?” she ventured. The purple gem was staring almost intensely forward, as if trying to take her mind off something, but after a second responded by turning down the radio.

“Yeah?”

“Where are we going in Steven’s car with several suspicious boxes?”

Briefly Amethyst broke her unblinking concentration on the road to slide Peridot a smirk. “We’re gonna put on a show.”

Though she tried, she didn’t sound too excited about it. “I don’t understand.”

“There’s a little town twenty miles south of here, called Orangeville or something; they don’t have the money to have fireworks. Sometimes the locals drive down to Beach City, but there’s always some poorer kids who can’t. But Vidalia has a friend whose brother works at a store someplace where they’re legal, so I’m able to get a bunch real cheap, and I set ‘em up outside town where everyone can see.”

“Wow.” Peridot brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Um. That’s…really nice of you.”

Amethyst was quiet for a second, then she replied, “Eh, it’s illegal, so it’s more fun for me.” But that didn’t sound like all.

Peridot looked out the window — they were speeding past an orchard now, and occasionally she glimpsed a flash of red from the trees’ ripe fruits. But just like always, whenever she sat next to Amethyst, she always found it hard to look at anything else for long. Gingerly, she turned her gaze back to Amethyst. Her face glowed in the vivid light of sunset, framed by windblown locks of hair that made Peridot want to brush them away from the quartz’s stunning eyes. Those perfect lips shaped silently into the lyrics on the radio. Amethyst reached to the volume again, but before Peridot could stop herself, she reached over and placed her hand over Amethyst’s.

“Amethyst, I want to talk to you,” Peridot burst. Amethyst’s warm hand slipped away and rested again on the steering wheel.

“We’re already talking.” Amethyst tried to make it sound casual, but Peridot knew better. She took a breath in.

“I meant — I meant I haven’t been talking to you like I should be. I don’t want to be friends anymore, Amethyst, I wanna go back.”

The car faltered as Amethyst turned to look at her, her midnight blue eyes wide. “What?”

Peridot felt her face growing hot. “I mean — I was wrong! I wish we were still girlfriends! There, I said it, I was wrong!”

Amethyst was looking at the road again. She blinked twice but said nothing. Peridot couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I one hundred percent regret breaking up with you,” she said. “I thought it was too hard to be apart from you when we _were_ going out — it’s even worse now, everything I see reminds me of how wonderful and good you are, I can’t go a decent second without thinking about you, and whenever I try, I end up yelling at everyone. Lazuli tried to kiss me herself just to make me _not_ pissed at everything! And, well, you can see how _wonderfully_ that worked!”

She looked down at her hands to possibly hide her raging blush —  _why_ did she blush when she was frustrated — but it was too late. The car jerked as Amethyst pulled to the side of the road and parked quite recklessly, letting the fireworks in the back jump loudly.

Then Amethyst’s hand crossed the distance and rested on top of Peridot’s, slipping in between just like she had done countless times before.

“Mind if…I have a try?” she asked hesitantly, and for the first time that night, Peridot knew she was saying what she meant.

They met in a heated crash, two weeks’ worth of loneliness crushed between their clasped hands and open mouths. The hands moved — Amethyst’s went up to caress Peridot’s cheeks and Peridot’s wove through Amethyst’s hair. For a second their mouths stayed. For just a second the kiss lived through closed eyes and tightly-pressed lips, a desperate reclamation.

Peridot wanted to say she forgot about how Amethyst tasted (strawberry lip balm and her last meal) but it was more like finding something that she thought she had lost forever. The memories flooded back with an intensity that made her almost want to cry, she moved according to the patterns of the dance that she and Amethyst had written so long ago. Amethyst always pulled away for greedy breaths of air; Peridot got impatient and closed the distance to the plump, soft lips before Amethyst could finish taking the breath.

“Peri…” Amethyst gasped in between kisses — oh, she looked so helpless, Peridot couldn’t handle it anymore.

“I want to stay with you,” she declared, brushing her fingers just barely over Amethyst’s gemstone. A faint light radiated from the smooth facets, warming Peridot’s hand and dusting her skin in a familiar shade of violet. “I miss you. I miss _us,_ as grammatically incorrect as that is. I miss Mystic Topaz. And I know we can still be her as friends, but it’s not the same.”

“I know.” Amethyst’s hand floated up to Peridot’s forehead and her thumb brushed her gemstone, sending a wonderful shiver up Peridot’s spine.

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Amethyst whispered and pressed a kiss to Peridot’s cheek, “I keep forgetting you’re new to this, heh. And it sucks that we don’t see each other a lot, and it gets really lonely. But that’s just how it goes. And…maybe I should’ve told you that you can’t fix it by breaking up with me.”

She made a face and began kissing Peridot again, trailing up her face on a clear path to her gem. Involuntarily, Peridot sighed in pleasure. “That _would_ have been nice to know beforehand…I should have done research on the subject. Oh, thank you…”

Amethyst’s lips were on her gem now, lingering for only a second before pulling away with a playful _smack_ that filled her with warmth and stomach-butterflies. “You were kinda right though,” she added. “It did get really hard to be away from you for a while. And we probably didn’t fix that at all.”

“Yes. We need a solution.”

“Well, you’re gonna love this.”

“Sarcastically or literally?”

“Dunno. But…I got to thinking, y’know, and one day I thought that maybe you could…live in my room maybe? If you were okay with it? Because the barn’s getting crowded, and I know you’re really attached to the place and got your office, but there’s the warp pad once we fix it up again, you can commute or something! Like a big bad businessgem, takin’ the train into the city every mornin’ to crunch some numbers!”

With every word Amethyst grew a little more animated, her smiles growing wider, her hands resting on Peridot’s shoulders and occasionally flying away to punctuate a point with a gesture. And with every word, Peridot felt herself filling more with the hope that things were going to work out all right.

“I have NO idea what you’re talking about!” Peridot replied ecstatically. “But it appears you’re smart as well as aesthetically flawless and emotionally satisfying! You have plenty of space, probably more than enough spare furniture. Garnet also resides in the temple, so Mystic Topaz will have plenty of opportunities to learn to not be absolutely terrible!”

She was babbling and it was wonderful. Amethyst had begun to laugh — the best thing in the world. Her bandanna slipped off her head and Peridot reached over to help fix it, but before she could, Amethyst leaned forward and planted a fast kiss on her lips.

“Yeah. We can work out the details later, but I’m glad we got that out of the way. It was kinda hard trying not to come running back to you every second. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me back.”

“You have _no_ idea…well, maybe you do,” amended Peridot as she tied the bandanna in a neat knot. Smiling but with flushed cheeks, Amethyst sat back and shifted the car out of park. Her right hand lingered on Peridot’s thigh.

“Eee-yup. Ready to go set things on fire, Peridazzle?”

Peridot grinned. “You know I am.”

They set off again into the fading light, between them, a song just waiting to begin again.

**Author's Note:**

> completely unedited;; in other words i can't believe i just wrote 2000 words in 3 hours why do i keep doing this. hopefully if i do any of the other prompts i'll make em shorter gotta get that petri dish out
> 
> check me out at equilateralwaffle.tumblr.com for status updates, amedot content, and if u plain out wanna talk


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